Bob St. Aubyn
February, 2015	Senior SQL Server Professional
	5078 Park Trail, North Ridgeville, Ohio  44039 216.235.7145 bobsaint@northcoastdataworks.com

Skills Snapshot

I’ve been working exclusively as a SQL Server professional for 15 years, with versions 2000 through 2012.  Engagements have included working as an independent consultant, as part of a consulting firm’s team, and as a full time DBA/Developer in IT departments.

The many venues I’ve worked in have all had slightly different needs from SQL Server, enabling me to experience projects involving several different facets of the SQL Server technology stack.  Here are some of the areas where that experience has focused:

Data Modeling

All aspects of logical data modeling for large and small data sets; defining a fully or partially normalized model that best suits both storage and consumer needs.  This sometimes included exploring and defining business rules that would govern validity.

Data Architecture

Implementing the data model in terms of physical database design, including attribute types and lengths, clustered keys, constraints and entity relationships (foreign keys).

Data Cleansing

Usually a preparatory step in a larger ETL project, I’ve done extensive work identifying anomalies in data in terms of both business rules and consistency, and designing queries that would accurately correct it.

ETL

Using SQL DTS (2000), all the ETL IDE flavors since 2005, and an abundance of TSQL, designed a myriad of ETL solutions that sometimes include complex transformations, SQL Server as either the source, target or both, and other data sources including text, Excel, Access, XML and services.  I’ve done a LOT of work developing SSIS packages.

TSQL

Writing TSQL is a passion and a specialty.  I’ve written just about every type of DDL, DML and SELECT imaginable, as well as several dozen utility scripts that help me identify and solve problems, identify and set optimal configuration settings and create utility, maintenance, monitoring and alerting objects, to name a few.  I’m also a strong believer that the design of SQL Server objects and all queries that touch the data should be self-documenting, with code written clearly, liberally commented and following a consistent pattern that makes its purpose and method crystal clear.

Performance Tuning and Optimization

Optimizing SQL Server performance in terms of hardware specs (especially regarding storage), database file layout, instance and database configuration, clustered and non-clustered index design, plan reuse and TSQL code.  This includes evaluating and/or proposing new designs as well as recommending improvements for established ones.

Troubleshooting

Identified root cause and solution for a wide variety of SQL Server problems including connectivity and authentication, query (DML and SELECT) performance, deadlocks, blocking and errors from a variety of sources.  Troubleshooting is greatly assisted by a library of utility and diagnostic scripts I’ve created over the years.

Custom SQL-Specific Alerting

Created custom, email-based alerting for SQL Server covering failed jobs, deadlocks, excessive blocking, file growth, long-running jobs and unauthorized high-level commands, to name a few.  Most are also logged to help identify historical patterns and correlate to other data.

Fully Automated Database Maintenance and Backup

Created a custom, job-driven SSIS solution that I have deployed in all SQL Server instances I’ve worked on in the past 5 years.  It covers many essential maintenance tasks for all databases on each instance including Consistency Checks, Index Defrag (custom algorithm), Statistics Update and Standard Logins, as well as Full, Differential and Transaction Log backups.  Much more on this – please ask me about it!

SQL Setup/Migration Process Streamlining

Created documentation to standardize and streamline the process by which SQL Server instances are initially setup, migrated to new hardware and configured for optimal reliability and performance.  Simultaneously developed more than a dozen TSQL scripts (referred to in the documentation) that make many of the steps highly repeatable, less trouble-prone and many times faster than before.

SQL AlwaysOn HA

Specific, recent and successful experience in piloting and deploying a SQL 2012 Availability Group to a production, business-critical instance.

SQL Server Health Check/Best Practices Evaluation

In a consulting scenario, performed a thorough evaluation of client’s production instances based on established (and personal experience) best practices, and then prepared and presented the results to all stakeholders, including what each item meant, it’s perceived risk and recommendations to mitigate.

 

technological diversity

My roots in database work actually started with MS Excel and Access – initially developing “applications” based on VBA automation.  In each case the deployed solution replaced a previous, largely manual process and vastly increased its efficiency.

Adventures with SQL Server have also required me to touch and become fluent in many other areas of IT, including networking, various Windows Server versions, Active Directory (accounts, authentication, permissions, SPN’s), WMI, VBScript, VB .Net, SQL Azure, Azure VM’s, VMWare VM’s, among others.

More recent experience has offered exposure to other storage engines like MongoDB, ElasticSearch and Azure table storage.

 

recent job history

 

Senior SQL DBA/Developer | OverDrive, Inc.

March, 2012 – February, 2015

n       Functioned primarily as first-line DBA for some 70 production instances with about 100 databases.

n       Deployed my custom database maintenance package to all instances in the enterprise, immediately correcting many index fragmentation and backup deficiencies.

n       Designed and deployed several custom alert solutions that brought to light many chronic problems that were previously unknown or lacked enough information to find root cause.

n       Through ongoing research and improved monitoring, solutions and process, and collaboration with developers and others in IT, cut occurrences of SQL-related problems in the enterprise dramatically.  These included deadlocks, job failures, query timeouts, contention issues and performance issues.  Instances becoming unresponsive, a fairly common occurrence prior to my arrival, had all but been eliminated.

n       Established documentation and greatly improved process surrounding deployment of new SQL instances and the migration of existing databases to them.  This improvement was largely driven by development of TSQL scripts that streamline many of the tasks.  These included configuration of the new instance and the transfer of the database and its security principals and permissions, as well as all other instance-level objects (logins, linked servers, jobs, schedules, alerts, etc.).

n       Heavily evangelized “better” practices surrounding SQL Server configuration, security practices and risks, TSQL deployment process, TSQL coding practices and quality control, and data architecture (including index design).

n       Through successful completion of several projects, demonstrated the advantages of using SSIS for ETL solutions.  One of these included a seriously complex package featuring automated ingestion of raw data in staging folders, special conditioning to prepare it for comparison to existing records (numbering several million) and a custom match quality algorithm partially driven by SQL Fulltext Search.

n       Presented, piloted and deployed relatively new SQL technologies such as Online Index rebuilds, Availability Groups, Change Tracking and Change Data Capture.

 

Senior SQL DBA/Developer | Western Reserve Group, Inc.

April, 2010 – March, 2012

n       Performed a thorough best practices analysis of SQL Server instances, and presented findings and recommendations to the company as an opening project.

n       Served as sole SQL Server DBA, Developer and SME for all SQL instances.

n       Identified root cause and mitigate almost to extinction, a chronic problem with deadlocks in the primary database application.

n       Deployed my custom database maintenance package to all instances in the enterprise, immediately correcting many index fragmentation and backup deficiencies.

n       Index-tuned a third-party database structure (EMC Documentum) to take its performance from being completely unacceptable (page loads in 3-5 minutes or more) to reasonable (15 seconds or less).

n       Designed the logical and physical data model for a brand new database application from the ground up.  This included design, scripting and creation of the database itself and all objects including tables, constraints, views, stored procedures, functions, clustered and non-clustered keys, security principals and permissions.

 

SQL Developer | National City Bank (consulting through) Sapphire Technologies, Inc.

October, 2009 – November, 2009

n       Designed an ETL solution for loading flat file, DB2 and cross-server SQL data into a common data repository using SQL 2005 SSIS and SSMS.  Solution used a Master/Child package design, and included restart logic (via checkpoint file), logging, file-based and SQL Server configurations and retry logic (child package would retry n times within execution window if source file was not present).  Existing validation and consolidation stored procedures were modified to increase efficiency and incorporate exception handling and logging code.

 

SQL Data Analyst | Insurance.com (consulting through) Oxford Technologies, Inc.

May, 2009 – October, 2009

n       Created ETL solutions for their client using SQL 2005 SSIS and SSMS.  Larger project involving careful design of several million-row selects, updates and cross-server data transfer.  Data sources in this single solution came from flat files and multiple databases on multiple servers.  Main database was over 7TB.  All projects managed by corporate Visual Source Safe database and moved through distinct Dev and Test environments prior to deploy.

 

SQL Solution Architect | AdvizeX Technologies, Inc.

August, 2008 – March, 2009

n       Worked as a Solution Architect/Consultant, advising on best practice considerations for highly performant and highly available SQL 2005 database solutions.  Also worked to generate awareness and demand among the AdvizeX client base for SQL BI solutions and by proxy, the MS BI product stack in general.

n       Completed the Hewlett Packard HF835SR course for PolyServe Matrix Server in January, 2009, and became the in-house expert on this HA technology for SQL Server.  Setup and configured a 3-node PolyServe cluster and performed a live WebEx demo of PolyServe to an audience of 14.

n       Participated in many internal and client-engaged discussions about best-practices concerning SQL Server, especially relating to HA and shared storage optimization.  Helped on many occasions to tune proposals and scope-of-work (SOW) documents to accurately summarize project work having one or more SQL components.

 

 

Database Technology Specialist | Solutient of Ohio, Inc.

October, 2005 – July, 2008

n       Performed several SQL DBA functions for 2000 and 2005 servers, including creation of Maintenance Plans, ad-hoc backup and restore tasks, performance monitoring, index defrag, bulk import, snapshot databases and troubleshot a myriad of process contention and connection problems.

n       Created and maintained a variety of advanced SQL 2000 DTS packages that performed a wide array of ETL tasks.  Often heavy use of VBScript in ActiveX task objects.  Also converted several DTS packages to SSIS packages.  Moved and transformed data from text, Excel, Access and SQL sources.  Used Scribe to migrate data from SQL 7.0 database to MS CRM 2.0.

n       Examined and tuned database performance using SQL Profiler and the Index Tuning Wizard.  Also used DBCC commands to identify and fix fragmentation of index data.  Rewrote hundreds of existing SQL SELECT statements to use index structure more efficiently and retrieve data faster.  Monitored and reported performance gains affected by my changes back to client.

n       Created a new SQL database to consolidate and normalize data from several MS Access databases.  Created a complex DTS package to migrate and clean the data, and ensure referential integrity in the new database.

n       Created a complete, trigger-based audit system for a production SQL 2000 database.  Audit tables collect data from each row affected by a DML operation.  Change data included all PK column values, which field(s) were changed, old and new values, by whom and when.

 

Database Administrator/Solutions Developer | Weltman, Weinberg & Reis Co., LPA

November, 2000 – October, 2005

n       Created and maintained a large relational-modeled data warehouse structure on a SQL 2000 instance to house HP3000 TurboIMAGE data and serve BI reporting requirements.

n       Created a combination of elaborate DTS packages that ran to completely refresh the data in the DW each evening.

n       Created and maintained several smaller SQL databases to support workgroup (LOB) applications.

n       Created and maintained a series of MS Access database applications that provided consolidated data management to Accounting, Marketing and Collections workgroups.  Applications included full UI, role-based security model, SQL Server back-end, code-based auto-complete and business rule enforcement, automated Emailing and BI reporting.

n       Worked with both Crystal Reports designer and Web designer and created SQL stored procedures and views that efficiently served their solutions.

 

Microsoft certifications

MCTS: SQL Server 2005

Microsoft Certified Technical Specialist: SQL Server 2005

Education

Lorain County Community College (Elyria, Ohio)

Courses completed June, 1989

Achieved Associates Degree in Electrical, Electronics Technology

references

£     Chris Karl, Database Practice Director, AdvizeX Technologies, Inc., 440.343.1664

£     Gary Rabung, VP of Ohio Operations, Solutient of Ohio, Inc. 216.654.0025

£     Dan Danszczak, QA Manager, Hunter Manufacturing Company, 440.248.6111 x327

£     Dave Speck, Operations IT Director, Western Reserve Group

£     Rebecca Dobelbower, Iteration Manager, Overdrive

£     John Sobolewski, Solution Architect, Overdrive